


in case of a flood

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Feminization, M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 21:49:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10671456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: written for 2016 spnspringfling





	in case of a flood

**Author's Note:**

> written for 2016 spnspringfling

There’s nothing above him but blue, blue sky. Summer lays heavy in the air, humidity thick enough to choke on. His body’s leaning back, head low so the sweat drips onto the ground and out his eyes. Dean stands next to him, huffing out air heavenward, sighs like it aches.

“Gonna miss this out in California?” Dean asks, a cocky slant to his mouth. Dean never wipes that grin off his face. Bastard. Like he knows what it does to Sam.

Personal space is still only a theoretical concept between them after so many gruff lectures about it. Sam butts against his older brother’s shoulder, ignores the swelling heat erupting in his gut at the touch.

“Dude. The same sky is everywhere,” he says. Another bead of sweat rolls down his face, uncontrollable even in the shade.

“I wasn’t talking about the sky.”

They’ve been living on a nameless dirt road in Terrebonne Parish. Somewhere past Houma at the edge of the Boot, where they build the houses high-up in case of a flood. Sam won’t be around for hurricane season, he notes absently. Instead, he’d have to worry about earthquakes and wildfires as far as the natural sort of disasters go. It’s an odd bargaining chip to consider.

“Am I gonna miss this heat? Fuck no,” Sam says, lays it on real thick, makes a production out of it. “C’mon let’s sit under the porch.”

Their house is elevated like all the others further down. It’s high enough for two six-foot Winchesters to sit under, peek their heads out and watch the stars on a country, backwoods night. They’re domestic in days like this. Louisiana means an unending supply of things to hunt while Sam achieves something like normal in his mind. Days are spent laying low, listening to Dean rattle off about the shrimp Po Boys, the girls with these thick accents, jamming their words together and stretching out the vowels, this cute waitress who sneaks him free bread pudding.

Sam pulls his brother from where they’re posted against the tall moss tree. His fingerprints leave these white marks dotting the inside of Dean’s forearm, striking against Dean’s summer pink skin. Dean follows him along his tail, somewhere in his blind spot. Sam’s always hyper-aware of him, a skill that’s been carved out of years knowing Dean could be hurt, bleeding, lost. Sam’s skin pebbles up, prickles with the excitement of a simple truth: Dean is nearby.

Dean keeps talking until the space gets smaller. They crouch underneath their double-wide that’s been raised at least two feet off the ground, then lie back on the battered blanket Dean spread out when they first moved here. There’s the distant hum of kids taking advantage of the backroad summer, riding on four wheelers.

And Dean starts yapping again. Sam’s immune to the annoyance it sometimes causes other people. Dean uses words like bubble wrap padding a package. He keeps a fragile situation safe by piling words on top of it. He talks about more food, more girls, working on this gorgeous car down at the shop. Sam listens, soaking it up like he’s Dean’s diary. Later in the day, while Sam’s drifting in front of the TV, he’ll remember something Dean said earlier. _Sammy, dare me to eat this whole thing in ten minutes. Time me_. Something stupid like that. It’s nice to still hear Dean long after he’s stopped talking about everything and nothing.

Sam notices how Dean’s voice gets a little rougher, how his hair’s a little shaggier. “Your hair’s getting long,” Sam comments as they settle into their hiding space.

This isn’t much of a hiding space when Dad will come back grime-covered, catch them, and say something like, “ _Aren’t you boys too old for clubhouses_?” Dean would say, “ _You’re just mad ‘cause you don’t know the secret password_.” Sam has to swallow back a laugh.

“I’m almost catching up to you, Rapunzel,” Dean says. And something else lies there, too, unspoken. “You should let me trim you up before you head out. Make you all pretty for the first day of school.”

Time stretches slowly underneath here. Sam looks up at the bottom of the house, thinks about how the night before, and the night before that, he slept with Dean in the same bed in this same house.

He threads cautious fingers into Dean’s when he says, “Sure. Want to help me pack, too? Maybe do my laundry?”

Dean’s fingers play along the edges of Sam’s palm, skitters around it. “Yeah, I’ll fold up your finest flannel real neat, put them right next to your tampons.”

“Dean.” He’s got sweat in his bangs and his heartbeat in his mouth. “I’m going to miss this.”

 

~

 

In the bathroom, there’s an oscillating fan in the window. Dean has him sitting on the countertop, and he’s hacking off Sam’s hair out of nostalgia more than anything.

Time is running out for moments like this. They're Winchesters and it's nothing new for them. Sam's got clothes with his own blood stains he claims as ketchup, jeans butchered at the knee, and the air around them has the general makings of burnt matches and decay. Dean always reeks of oil and smoke. If Sam sticks his tongue out, he can taste it.

Sam's hair falls in slight curls in his lap. Dean's grin grows wider and wider when he’s done.

"Did you get your barber's license behind our back?" Sam says, twisting around and eyeing his hair in the mirror. His hair's to his chin now. He can breathe easier like a weight's been lifted. Or maybe that has something to do with Dean gliding his hand through his own handiwork, scratching through Sam’s scalp.

Dean shrugs. "You caught me," he says. But really, if you do enough of your own haircuts while crammed in gas station bathrooms, you develop a useful skill or a talent for it. "And it's still long enough for you to put it up in a bun, Princess." Dean’s voice is appreciative, approving. He demonstrates, gathering all Sam’s hair up at the top.

 

~

 

They’ve been down in the swamps for three months. Long enough for Sam to hone his appreciation for stability.

Dad is more of a roommate and business partner than a family member. There’s the occasional story he’ll tell about Sam’s mother, or he’ll give girl-related advice that he hasn’t been able to apply himself in a long time until he’s misty-eyed and voice weary. But mostly, Dad haunts the house like his bones are buried somewhere, needing a salt and burn.

He doesn’t attend Sam’s graduation. Dean more than makes up for it, wearing his cheap Fed suit two sizes too big and a smile that could light up the whole auditorium.

 

~

 

Dean doesn’t say anything about the acceptance letters. He hasn’t said anything too obvious about it since discovering them. He only shrugs, says Sam’s always been hogging up all the brains in this family.

They sit underneath the house after dinner, and the sky is Impala black. Nighttime or not, the humidity doesn’t let up. Bugs big enough to be distantly related to moths all come swarming at them. Dean keeps swatting the bugs away from his neck. An hour or so ago, Sam felt that same patch of skin underneath his tongue.

There’s no specified time slot for whenever they mess around. Sparring can lead to kissing underneath the porch. Sharing the same bed leads more to kissing, and always has since Sam started accepting this as just another part of their shared biography. They live on the road, survive on processed food, they kill and witness death, and sometimes, Sam wraps his hand around his brother’s dick. To summarize.

Sam stops analyzing the mechanics of it, because no one has a brother like Dean.

Dean uses some kind of wizardry or charisma, or a combination of both to convince Sam to wear his new haircut in a bun. He has it up now, wisps falling out and framing face.

Sam swats an imaginary bug away. “Ask me to stay.”

Stanford may as well be written in helium ballooned letters in the sky. The day is coming, Imminent and inevitable like bad weather.

“I would never ask you that.” Dean’s tone goes military precise, matching the same rhythm as his rigid ‘yes sirs.’ Sam can make out half of Dean’s face in the moonlight. The way Dean munches on his lips, Sam can tell he craves something in his mouth. Sam will be happy to oblige later. “You’re going even I got to carry you on my back.”

If Sam knew nothing else, he would still be good at school. He’s never understood his peers’ slacking. The flow of homework doesn’t compare to the flow of blood. He has perspective. Sam welcomes things like honest work and the dull throb of everyday life. Stanford is the next logical step.

It makes sense. Dean scrounges whatever scraps he can and makes a decent-enough meal out of canned goods and discount meat. Sam has a penchant for cleaning and waking up next to Dean. They’re both hard workers, thick-skinned and bred on the gospel of John Winchester. It just makes sense for Sam to say, “So why don’t you come with me?”

Dean gives him one of those bullshit detecting grins. He never believes something like opportunity can be given to him. “What, you want to run off and elope? Maybe I could buy us a house out in the country and a dog while we’re at it.”

Sam smiles. “Those are your words, not mine.”

 

~

 

There’s nothing his big brother can’t milk out of him.

“No, no. Wear it up,” Dean pants in Sam’s ear.

The house has two bedrooms, and they share one of them. It’s just a plain box decorated with nothing but the cracks in the walls, perpetual salt, their minimal wardrobes slung around until they scrap enough coins for laundry day, and a mirror on the closet with a single crack running down the middle.

Sam stands in front of it, watching his brother stand behind him and putting all his hair up in a ponytail.

“Love seeing you like this,” Dean whispers, something like a growl lingering in his voice.

Dean could see Sam wearing a paper sack on his head and a potato sack to match, and he’d still get hard for him, conveniently ignoring the fact they share blood. Sam’s breaths get heavier when he sees his hair slicked back, the end of the ponytail hitting the jut of his spine.

It’s too hot for clothes, their skin naked and sticky sweet. Until Sam doesn’t feel so naked anymore. “Are you…” Sam starts off shyly. His body heats with adrenaline. “Are you gonna put it in?”

“Damn right,” Dean says. Royal blue ribbon loops around Sam’s ponytail under Dean’s careful hands.

Sam sucks Dean off wearing nothing but the bow. Dean yanks at the ponytail when he comes.

 

~

 

“All I know is that if you go through with this, you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your life.”

The thing is, Dean thinks he’s a mistake, like Sam fell in love with his own brother strictly out of convenience.

“Just think about all the taco stands,” Sam entices.

“Tempting.” Dean frowns in an approving gesture. He looks contemplative for a moment.

“Who says that _this_ —” Dean gestures vaguely around him at the slow churning summer and even the squishy earth they sit on underneath their shitty house. Sam knows perfectly that some piss poor town not worth the ink to dot on a map is more summarizing of what they have than hand jobs under the covers while Dad’s gone. A more honorable definition than incest. “None of this has to stop when you move.”

“You can come, too. I want you there.” Sam says, desperate.

“Just shut your fuckin’ mouth, Sammy.” And Dean shuts it up for him, leans into him with a kiss. In between greedy kisses, all the hungry smacking sounds, Dean’s saying, “I want.” Kiss. “To take care of you.” Kiss. Kiss. “Mine.”

Kiss. “So do it.” Kiss. “Wake up with me.” Sam has no problem being alone, can waste an hour or so lost in his own thoughts. But he pictures being in Stanford alone, and it doesn’t digest well when he thinks about a bed without Dean in it. “I know that’s what I want.”

Dean knits his brows together, looks at Sam like he’s possessed. And he is, but not by anything that you can exorcise. This haunting, maddening thing for Dean can’t be stopped with just some Latin prayer.

 

~

 

They figure things out like they always do.

Flat green land and sugarcane fields turn into red dust and cacti. For the first time in what feels like the longest, they watch the changing geography together. Sam has abstract thoughts stuck on repeat. _Cloudless Louisiana sky. Our hiding space. Never-ending heat. Blue ribbon._

Sam jerks Dean off in the bathroom when they have a stop in Arizona. Good old-fashioned spit with the added bonus of wrapping the silk ribbon around Dean’s length. Sam mutters filth in Dean’s ear, knowing what makes his brother come the hardest. He’s calling Dean his big man, talking about how he’ll wear a skirt for him around _their_ house and letting Dean load up his pretty little twat full.

“Jesus, Sam,” Dean groans, piling Sam’s hair up, spurting hot and thick on the ribbon tangled up in Sam’s hand.

 

~

 

The road is nothing new. Hasn’t been for as long as Sam can remember. He can tell you about the best burger in the Midwest. He knows the shortest route to anywhere in the lower 48, and can research and read a map with the diligence of hunting for buried treasure.

The new things are sleeping in brand new sheets without jizz stains, no 5 a.m. training, no battles for the last hot shower in the morning, no endless quest that wears his brother down to the nub. They don’t know how long it’ll take before Dad literally raises hell to find them. But Dean makes good pancakes, and they don’t need a hiding space anymore.

Out here, time still moves quietly, and Dean still itches for a hunt. Sam wonders how long this will last, when trouble magnetized to the Winchester name will inevitably follow.

Until then, they have a good thing going.


End file.
